Monthly Archives: February 2020

 

Anyway, the first question on your lips is likely to be, “Why?” It’s very simple: before this morning, when we were slumped over a coffee and nursing the mother of all hangovers, nothing called The National Union of Apathetic Vapers existed. That ought to be a damn fine reason to set it up, we reasoned. Are you excited yet? In all probability, no. But don’t let that put you off; you haven’t heard all of the great things we can offer in return for a very affordable monthly direct debit yet.

For a starter, there are all of the wonders you will receive as a new member. Each new application will be treated as fast as we can be bothered to get around to. Normally we’d say within a couple of days or something – but it really depends if there’s a decent new series worth watching on Netflix. At some point you’ll get a pack containing a hand drawn membership card bearing an artist’s impression of what she thinks you might look like. Keep this safe; you may need it to vote at the annual general meeting. That’s if we get around to organising one, there’s literally tons of stuff to do to arrange them. Of course, as an apathetic vaper you’ll be fully conversant with all the things that you can’t be bothered to do either and empathise with us. If we come across some other stuff we’re not using from the vape kit we might thrown those in your membership pack too.

So, what other benefits does being a NUAV member confer? Not much to be honest. You’ll be able to join our Facebook group (because they’re dead simple to set up). From there you’ll be able to download our amazing range of jpegs we copy-pasted from the Internet and maybe ones we made ourselves (that resemble the work of a toddler suffering from St. Vitus Dance).

Policies and campaign issues are an important aspect to The National Union of Apathetic Vapers. As in, we realise that apathetic vapers don’t want any policies or campaign issues. Joining us guarantees you that we will never ask you to stand outside a building in the cold to show people you vape. Not just that, we also pledge we will never ask you to sign a single petition or watch a video about the issues impacting on vaping.

In fact, the default option on the enrolment form is for you never to be contacted in any form whatsoever. No emails, no personal messages and no status updates clogging up you life – isn’t this what the two million, five hundred and ninety-five thousand of you have been calling out for? Damn straight. The National Union of Apathetic Vapers is just the organisation you’ve been waiting for so just look at our website for more details…when we’ve done one.

Thanks,

The National Union of Apathetic Vapers committee

 

 

Death by Fire

Much has been made of li-ion batteries, which is a shame because they could be found in anything. It seems unfair that vaping has to share a danger with laptops, cellphones and torches. It might be better for current smokers to weigh up a more directly attributable issue.

So there you are happily making a new coil, gently threading in the wick and loading up with a juice that tastes so awesome it could have been made by angels. It’s something so enthralling that you utterly forget about the bread you placed into the toaster until the alarm shreds the focussed silence. Now you face one of two options: disable the fire alarm or ignore it, there are no alternatives. It doesn’t matter whether you opt for route one or two, either way it’s going to end up as an inferno and people being interviewed on television saying how you weren’t as bad as the others are making out.

Death by Ignorance

We all begin vaping without knowing everything, but then we get hooked into buying spares for our spares and within six months you need a shipping container for storage. Large collections mean a number of things: firstly, develop some good DIY skills. Shelves were made for books, picture frames and those things your sister-in-law gives you for Christmas.

A collapsing shelf is the least of the issues here. Collecting too many vape things leads to losing things. Not knowing where that reel of wire went leads to anger. Slipping on that reel (kindly placed on the stairs by a caring relative) results in a ten-foot slide, a trip to A&E and people being interviewed on television saying how you weren’t as bad as the others are making out.

Death by Groin

We were all smokers, the statistics say so. Those of us with decent hand-eye coordination also hold a driving licence. This means that a huge swathe of vapers have experienced the joy of a lit cigarette falling down between your legs while on the motorway. And it’s this experience, burned into the psyche and thighs everywhere, that stops us popping our mods between our legs when on the road.

And we can’t not vape as nothing says “I’m an awesome driver” more than someone peering through a windscreen surrounded by clouds. And because we don’t have anywhere decent to store a mod in the vehicle it teeters from where it was balanced, it shifts – it sends the drive-thru coffee groinwards. Against the backdrop of emergency lights, people are being interviewed on television saying how you were the kind of stupid that would Vote Trump.

Vaping isn’t safe, but then neither is living.

 

 

Travel by plane, train or, as the late John Candy demonstrated, automobile is often not easy. But the issue is more fraught when you are a vaper as it can lead to danger, being spoken to in a condescending voice or even public humiliation. We plan on tackling the toughest challenges head on.

In a car, especially at this time of year, vaping leaves a residue over the windscreen. It can quickly build up and combine with dust particles to form a barrier that scatters light in multiple directions and leave the driver feeling like that acid tab from 1982 is kicking in again. It should be noted at this point that this is simply information we’ve gleaned from our research and does not reflect our lifestyle choices.

While some may tell you to use an alcohol-based wipe to clear the screen we believe they have overlooked the cost this would incur to a heavy cloud chucker. The solution, as if it wasn’t obvious enough, is to have a small child hold the steering wheel while you lean out of the driver’s window and carry on vaping. If also means that you will be able to give other travellers a friendly smile as you point to the impressive cloud you’d just exhaled. A cheeky wink at the same time will elicit smiles and goodwill amongst the other road users – and probably improve the overall image of vaping to boot.

As little Johnny angles the motor into a stationary vehicle in the station car park, it’s time to turn our attention to trains. Be it on the platform or in the carriage, there are multitudes of people ready and willing to take offense at something they can neither smell nor be endangered by. A number of strategies are open to us in overcoming this problem starting with a Thomas the Tank Engine costume. Instead of demanding a SWAT team wipe your blood over platform 2A, parents will be lining up to shove their children’s faces into your chimneystack.

Fancy dress is less practical in the confines of a carriage. By far the best play here is to take some tugs behind a newspaper and then, after breathing out, declare in a loud voice that you are worried you are about to self-combust again. In order to make this tactic work for you it pays to have spent thirty minutes talking in a loud voice about the last time it happened. If no one is sitting with you then pretend to have this conversation on a cellphone, everyone loves to listen in on other’s telephone conversations.

The police will have safely handed over little Johnny to social services, and impounded your car, by the time you arrive at the airport. The trick to dealing with vapes on a plane is to keep an eye on the toilet. Thrill seekers continue enjoy a bout of coupling at altitude and will be so focussed on each other they’ll never notice you nipping in at the same time. Grab an article of frantically discarded clothing, place it over the smoke detector and lose yourself in a flavoured haze. The fog you’ve produced will help you to return to your seat unnoticed, leaving you free to tut loudly with the other passengers at the toilet couple being berated by angry cabin crew.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for travelling with Stealthvape, to remind you to return your seats to the upright position and hope that you have a lovely weekend.

 

 

A camera somewhere in Oregon was sending images of cranks and the certifiably insane toting the kind of weapons the British government couldn’t afford to equip the army with. Apparently the whole thing revolved around them not being happy about something. Or their mutual love of camping in snow? Clare hadn’t got a clue to be honest, and cared even less. What she knew was one thing – if it was a legitimate form of protest for Americans then it was bloody well good enough for the vapers of Ramsgate.

A plan formed in the part of her mind that sat between the bit devoted to watching Jeremy Kyle and the section for deciding what delivery meal to have on Friday night. The TPD was coming. She wasn’t quite sure if it was an injection or the paramilitary wing of the NHS…but she was adamant that it was bad. “Takin’ our bleedin’ right to do what we want,” she’d exclaim to anybody on the settee during advert breaks. Rights such as picking a fight in Primark by blowing clouds at the till, failing at vape tricks in KFC and pretending her juice delivery hadn’t arrived (even though Jim had signed for it).

Their mate Barry has a catapult, she reasoned. Not one of those things that kids have, Bazza’s one could take the coconut clean off a rigged stand at the travelling fair. Jim had an obscene collection of chef knives. A hoard that was stupid for the number in total, the size of some and the fact that he only ate crisp sandwiches. Finally, her mate Josie’s 27yr-old had an air rifle and he’d got a load of practice shooting at cats. Ramsgate Town Council wouldn’t know what’d bloody well hit it – they could stage their very own armed militia occupation. Stuff the TPD, the fact that they close at 12 every day and Malcolm sodding Wilkinson and his mace. She’d show them. She’d show them all.

Of course, Clare had received the same opportunities every vaper had been given to negate the need for direct action. Down the Vale Tavern, she’d been asked to:

• Talk to her MP – “They’re all corrupt ain’t they. It’ll be a waste of time.”
• Write to her MEP – “Sod that, they put ‘em in the bin.”
• Sign the petitions – “I did one but I can’t be bovvered with the rest. There’s too many. Why didn’t they just have one for ***** sake?”

Yep, Clare had the same chances but she reckoned that someone else would sort it all out for her. It was their fault, whoever “they” were. “They’d” cocked up well and truly by not stopping this TPD whatever it is – “probably because they were too busy with their stoopid petitions or sumfink.”

“If you want to get sumfink done propa,” she shouted across at Jim, “you ave to do it your bloody self. That’s why we’re gonna take it to the council.” Jim brushed breadcrumbs and the remains of some Walkers Cheese & Onion from his stomach and nodded. He’d not heard a word she’d said but after all these years of marriage he knew that any other response usually ended up with one of them explaining to the police why the other was sitting in the back of an ambulance.

“I’m gonna sort it out tomorra. Or maybe at the weekend. Or maybe someone else will do it.”

“Yeh, someone else will probably do it.”

 

 

Then the spirit of progress arrived in the form of bulldozers, diggers and men. But then progress is awesome when you’re 8 years-old and allowed to do anything during the summer. We gave little thought to the grass being churned or them razing the beautiful dovecot to the ground because for kids scaffolding is like cake to members of the Women’s Institute. Not just any scaffolding, this was 1970’s scaffolding. This was the kind that didn’t have an impenetrable fence surround or daft signs telling you to go away. Daft signs compelling you to go vandalise a bus shelter instead – and this would have been really stupid as we’d already done that.

A new road and identikit houses rose from the rubble and mud. The stream steadily filled with old cement bags and then the village shop shut down. Something was going wrong with the world. It was becoming a greyer place. Adulthood beckoned with a life devoid of milk floats, rural bus services and frequent power cuts. I didn’t have a concept that this would become a preamble for a tale on the UK’s leading vaping spares company’s website at the time. When it took place I didn’t care about the future.

So there it is, an event from my life that I’ve now despatched to the Internet like Peter Kay tale of yore, but lacking in humour and no mention of lamb bhuna. That’s because we didn’t have them; if we wanted to go all fancy food then it was lasagne or a Sodastream. Damn, now I’m just a couple of references to Juliet Bravo and Crackerjack away from a full-on Kay routine.

Sharing. It’s nice to share, it has to be true because that’s what children are told. We don’t lie to kids. Imagine the misery that would exist in a small person if they had to eat an entire packet of Haribos all by themself. No, little ones prefer to feel a warm glow of contentment as a parent removes a fistful. Sharing stories or sharing sweets, it matters not – the world adores being involved in our lives.

And that is why joy is unbridled when it comes to like and share competitions on Facebook. Not only do you get to see what competitions are running you can count how many of your friends have already entered by the email notifications of being tagged in them.

 

Petition of the Year

Never before have so many been asked to sign so much so many times. The only petition we haven’t seen is a petition to stop petitions. Some of these have been very worthwhile – the Totally Wicked petition deserved all of our support to lend weight to their legal action. Likewise, Clive Bates’ petition attacking the TPD and the recent (and essential to sign it if you haven’t yet) 100K Campaign are highly commendable. But in a field of strong competition, we have to award the prize this year to the amazing Save Vaping petition – the only petition where you can invalidate your signature by obtaining a T-shirt saying you saved vaping. Here’s to Greenpeace giving away free petrol in cans labelled “I saved everyone from global warming”.

Shed of the Year

It’s very easy to be flippant about things but no one should underestimate the importance of a good backdrop for a YouTube video – it’s probably the most important thing in vaping. Some YouTubers think it is important to show you they live in a Comet showroom, others film their shows inside a cardboard box. Only one man has the perspicacity to use a shed. Sheds are part of the fibre of this country – if sheds aren’t celebrated then the terrorists win. Huzzah for Todd’s shed.

Idiot Move of the Year

It’s been a tight call in this category as so many have gone above and beyond in attempt to lift the title. Whether it has been politicians attempting to force through de facto bans or anti-ecig activists lying about research, we’ve been spoilt for options to exclaim “My word, what idiots!” As vaping has faced the strongest opposition around the world ever, some vape companies decided that they would attack…err…vapers and vape companies. For everyone who has sent out a Cease & Desist letter because they wanted to cover up the truth about their products – you are all joint winners.

Handbags of the Year

Handbags, as everyone knows, are even more important than sheds. Especially when the bag contains two bricks and a Cease & Desist letter. Following on from the last award: strange people run some companies. They seem to believe that the best way to win admirers and customers is to live their lives in Caps-loc. Five Pawns must get an honourable mention as runners-up for trying to obfuscate test results on their juice range – but it wasn’t good enough to win this year’s coveted prize. So step forward and collect you prize Fernando Solis of Hyon Mods. His spat that inspired two glorious videos from Vaping with Vic  made for great entertainment. Unfortunately, Mr Solis can’t be here with us tonight and so we would like to ask Vic to collect the jpg on his behalf.

Vapefest of the Year

It can be very difficult to out-do yourself when you have already attained a level of excellence. Like a man’s razor – surely they can’t manage to add one more blade and make it even better, and yet they do. Likewise, Vapefest continued to leap up to a whole new level this year. In fact, the only downside is the concern regarding if there can be one in 2016 given the latest pronouncements from the government. So, well done to Vapefest 2015, worthy winners and only candidates for the Vapefest award.

Forum Joke of the Year

The social media is a tricky place to navigate. The written word is cast adrift from the context given by visual cues and vocal inflection – what can appear like a light-hearted quip to the writer is suddenly interpreted as an insult on everything a reader holds dear. More words ensue; someone invokes Godwin’s Law and the sound of e-Tears fill the internetz. So, well done to everybody for posting a picture of Sting or Leslie Ash whenever the word Mod is used. We all appreciate you effort to be witty and you can feel proud of your contributions – but everyone who posted a picture of a tank can feel justly proud and have the use of the winners’ jpg for the whole of 2016.

Complaint of the Year

All vendors will have their own stories and we’ve heard many of them (we all talk to each other). Some customers have been concerned that their vendors haven’t anticipated the order and cycled it around to their house 15 minutes before the online transaction was made. Other customers have expressed disgust that vendors have the audacity to charge for postage. Our winner though goes to the Stealthvape customer who genuinely believed that we were profiteering to a disgusting level with our exclusive Oscillation Overthrusters.

For the record, we make a loss on every £125,000 sale.

Thing That We Can’t Talk About In Case It’s Used To Ban Vaping of the Year

Frequent mentions of XXXXXXXX or XXX XXXX XXXXXXXXXX are removed on social media so that some sections of forums end up resembling a redacted chemical weapons report. XXXXXXXX users must be wondering if the same response would happen if vape devices could be used for vaping XXXXXXX or enhancing a XXXXX. Aha, it seems like these are automatically censored too. 2015’s winner then is XXXXXXXXX.

Not-Vapefest of the Year

There is only one Vapefest but life is not like the Highlander film, there can be more than one. This year there were three more than one in the UK. That’s four, there were four vape events this year. In trying to work out which one would win this hotly contested category we had to appraise a number of qualities, like: Did they serve beer? Did the beer run out? And, how many bags of Freeshit™ was it possible to go home with? The process was more intensive than a school Ofsted inspection but ultimately hinged on one vital thing – did we manage to visit it? As such the Vape Expo UK beat off the other challengers to lift the top prize. Well done Vape Expo UK for being something we attended. Given our love of staying in bed all weekend this was no mean feat.

Forum of the Year

Some might think that a field of one is not expansive and barely reflects the excellent options out there. Some might think that but we encountered huge problems trying it another way. One minute we were debating “Best Forum”, the next we had spent seventeen hours locked inside Mumsnet. Fortunately the shopping needed doing and the break snapped us back to our senses. To time to watch Ash vs. The Evil Dead we renamed it the Forum (that we advertise on) of the Year award. Congratulations go to Planet Of The Vapes, we love advertising with you and really appreciate the Vendor of the Month award we won.

Ostrich of the Year

It takes skill and practice to make it appear as though you are listening to someone and yet at the same time imagining bunnies frolicking in meadows. Oh sure, most married couples do it to a semi-professional standard but it takes a politician’s effort to elevate it to full pro status. Lame Duck Drakeford sat through hours of submissions by experts telling him vaping is good, got the results of a Welsh government funded survey demonstrating that there’s no gateway effect – and yet still believes that a threat he can’t prove exists needs banning in case it appears in the future like the Rapture or a New Kids On The Block comeback tour. Feel free to use the jpg all year on your website, Mark, you earned it.

Stupid of the Year

This year there has been: Too. Much. Stupid.

The Californian Department for Public Health saying that there is such a thing as third-hand nicotine is still as duh as it was in January. Martin McKee (he really is a professor) telling folks that vaping can lead to cocaine addiction was a real head-stuck-in-railings moment. How about the ban on vaping in the great outdoors of North America? It probably renormalises Smoky the Bear or something. People continuing to use subohm tanks on hybrid mods or setting fire to their homes with dodgy chargers is now too commonplace to be even worth thinking about any longer. No, it has to be the UK government/Department of Health’s proposals for the implementation of the TPD. Any piece of regulation that stops vape companies advertising, that blocks forums and social media groups on Facebook and the like and restricts freedom of speech in public is abhorrently stupid – and that is why we encourage everybody to sign the 100K Campaign. The Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP can collect his jpg when he promises to scrap the proposals.

Ban of the Year

Attempted bans don’t get a look in here – you tried, dear legislators, but you failed and fail to win the lovely jpg as a result. You failed in Wales and in California, leaving the award wide open to the authorities in New Jersey. The dullards who organised Vape Expo NJ thought the law wouldn’t apply to them – but it did. Vaping was banned…from a vape event. Will this happen in Britain next year? Promoters Andy Balogh and Don Miller will have to share the jpg with health Nazi Jay Elliot.

Vendor of the Year

It would be too easy to make Stealthvape the winner of this award. We were surprised exactly how easy – and awarded it to ourselves. There’s no rules prohibiting this kind of thing apparently, you’d have thought there would be a government department dedicated to the elimination of self-promotion…but then what would Peter Andre do with his days? Fear not, we created a 1^st equal winner. We could have come to our decision based on things such as type of products sold or customer service or any of a thousand other criteria. We didn’t. We chose Vape Geek because Nat is lovely and Rob has an awesome name. There should be more people called Rob. We could have called the award “Best Rob” but then there’d have been no 1^st equal.

Reviewer Who Looks Most Like A Puffin of the Year

We like puffins. Actually we love puffins and everything about them. We love their bills, their funny walks, the fact that that they are the only sea-based bird to run a publishing house and their name. Puffin. Use it instead of a swear word every time something goes wrong and you’ll have an instant smile back on your face. So when it was suggested that Damian Safer Vaper group Morter bore a passing resemblance to one we felt compelled to whip up a special award just for him.

Scopes of the Year

Keep your friends close, they say, and keep your enemies closer. It’s never made an awful lot of sense; personal space is essential. But then it’s important to keep your juice man exceptionally close – otherwise he’d never be able to fight his way through all the friends and enemies hanging around outside Stealthvape HQ. Scopes fits the bill. And for everyone who doesn’t live next-door to him, Scopes E-Liquid can also use the postal service to deliver fine juice.

Coolest Juice Maker of the Year

We don’t understand popular culture but think it’s important there are juice makers out there who are down with the kids. The hippest bloke in Vapeland knows what is happening from what is not happening – and all the cool people love techno goth, apparently. Many already appreciate that the translation of the Native American word Manabush into English is: “He who moves with dayglo dreads to a pumping beat”. No wonder then that Manabush receive as many letters asking for fashion tips as they do for juice orders.

Vape Accessory of the Year

Let’s be perfectly clear here, the beard is out. Last weekend, a man sat near us in a Nottingham pub. Many questions could have been posed but why anybody would intentionally make himself into a Gary Glitter tribute remains unexplained. As he tugged on his ecig you could imagine him humming one of his never-to-be-heard-again songs to himself. We don’t need that in vaping. The trouble with this award is that it’s related to fashion – and now I think about it there will always be a problem with whatever we award it to. It’s too late to scrub the thing now so let’s just say you can give it to whatever you think rocks. As long as it’s not a baseball cap. Donald Trump wears baseball caps. Please not a baseball cap.

Vaper of the Year

There can only be one winner here – you lot. It’s been a delight to supply you all with wicks, wires and rest all year, a delight and an honour. We’ve been blown away by the wonderful comments you’ve made to us and on the Internet. Whatever the future brings it has been a special year full of special people. You are special and we love you for it. The Stealthvape team want to wish you all a happy holiday and that 2016 brings you nothing but fantastic vapemail.

 

 

Crouching on the rooftop, he reached inside his cape for the bottle in the utility belt. The contents were meticulously added to a wick while arching over the device to protect it from the torrential deluge. Everything held a reflective sheen, a steel aquatic shroud. The bottle returned to safe storage, he raised the copper tube to his mouth and inhaled.

The traffic rumble intertwined with the weather’s gentle white noise, the metropolitan soundscape offering a bleakness to compliment the view. A drab austerity that mirrored itself in Vapeman’s heart while clouds of peanut scented vegetable glycerin pearled out from the mouthpiece and upwards.

For what seemed like forever, Vapeman had fought for justice. He’d fought for values that he held as worthy: honesty, integrity and the need for a scientific peer-review process. When Carnage, Apocalypse and Venom had sent letters to the World Health Organisation or written articles for The Lancet, Vapeman took to Twitter with a righteous fury previously reserved only for people who jumped the lane-closing queues on motorways.

But what was it worth? What was the merit of the time spent in the secret hideout, the hours completing online petitions? There are no bad endings for superheroes. It’s a rule. Or something. No matter how bleak the outlook, there’s always “…and with one bound our hero was free”. Right? Vapeman knew his lore: no matter how one issue ends, no matter how the story arc is weaved, eventually right wins out. Right? Bad guys vanquished, friendships forged and order restored.

There’s that court case, the one people are clinging to. There’s that. Nothing else has worked so there has to be that. The clock has its hands at three minutes to midnight, Doomsday for juice. There has to be that. Another tug on the mouthpiece, another peel of vape curling and fighting with itself.

The wind picks up. It’s a bitter gust of pre-winter that carries the sheeting downpour off to an angle and sends pieces of loose paper on secret missions.

There’s something about despondency. That darkest of celluloid hours when the hero is on the verge of abdication and begins to embrace Paul Nystom’s malaise. The moment when it seems our protagonist will be subsumed by existential nihilism. It’s the cue for things to turn around. There’s that court case, the one people are clinging to? There’s that?

And it’s at this moment a sheet gets stuck to droplets on Vapeman’s boot. It’s the proposals for vape advertising in a post-TPD world. It’s not a good read – a bit like a column penned by Katie Hopkins, but serious. We don’t live in a world of heroes but like comic book characters, vaping could soon to be the stuff of myth and legend. It might be a decent time to have another chat with your local MP.

 

 

They said that about Nigel Pearson. He’s a bloke, for all but the three of you who know, who does stuff with football teams. What he does and who he did it for is irrelevant – but they said it when he was reappointed to a club he’d worked at before. It’ll all go wrong, they said. It’ll go wrong and we’ll all hate him and everything will be wrong with the world. Unfortunately they were wrong but they won’t remember that because they’ll only recall the times they were correct.

They said the girl who binned me on my 21^st birthday shouldn’t return to me. Now on this point I can fully understand the reasoning behind it seeing as I was an utter waste of space. But come back she did. Years of marriage and children later all of their objections to our partnership probably still hold true but it’s worked in a fashion.

But when it comes to vaping I hold no store in the adage. Revisiting past ways of vaping is brilliant for mixing up the experience. For sure there’s been the repetition of past failures but also the rediscovery of enjoyable ways to exhale vape.

There’s not an atomiser in the collection that doesn’t sport Kanthal again these days. Gone are the dalliances with temperature-controlled set-ups and the sojourn into stainless steel coils. As much as it was interesting to try out new ways of procuring a cloud I’ve returned to the ease of whipping up with wire that I can do blindfold. The thing is, for Kanthal, there was nothing wrong with it to begin with. After the initial learning process to eliminate hotspots or glowing legs it’s never missed a beat – and the vastly improved range of wire diameters makes it a doddle to wind for any desired outcome.

Maybe, in hindsight, I shouldn’t have bought another Maraxus. It seems so obvious now, but there was so much I didn’t like about using one it makes a nonsense of the decision to make a repeated purchase. Fortunately the same can’t be said for the Heron. Much loved by many, at one point in time two of them adorned mods on the shelf and were my daily tanks. I caught myself eyeing them again last week and was fortunate to get one on loan. It saved me the disappointment of trying to shift it on; it’s just too tight for me now.

Of course, that’s the benefit of going back to old kit – it reaffirms my belief that where I am with my current kit is exactly what I need. With the decline of the second-hand market purchases are fewer and the collection tends to remain shelf-bound rather than being moved on. It gives me pleasure to clean and use.

‘They’ might not like it, but I’m going to break out an 18350, coil to 1.2Ω and try out a 12mg tobacco-based liquid with a well-deserved Friday night beer tonight. It’s been a while.

 

 

“Is it meant to be like this?” It’s the only question going through my mind as I run across the dystopian, post-apocalyptic landscape in Fallout 4. Picking up my seventeenth carrot before having a super-mutant scythe me in two because I only have the weapon equivalent of a cap gun…surely there’s meant to be more to this game?

I’ve clocked up days playing Fallout on the PS4 and everyone I’ve met in the game (even the dog) doesn’t like me. Isn’t the point of computer games meant to be escapism? If I want reality I’ll go to the shop or ride a bus and let everyone take an aversion to me as usual.

That juice I’ve just bought, the one everyone is going on about – you know, that one getting rave reviews in videos? Is it just me or is it meant to taste like something cooked up by Heston Blumenthal? Surely it’s not meant to be like this? Quite how does someone manage to skilfully blend the flavour of sheet metal with a subtle nuance of bleach?

“Is it meant to be like this?” I was sitting trying to fix the positive and negative wires to the Evod head. And then I was poking either too much or too little cotton through the coil. It struck me that vaping wasn’t half as enjoyable as other people would have me believe. I spent weeks bouncing from dry hit to flood – it was like a self-made analogy for post-global warming British weather.

Of course it isn’t meant to be like that. “Get a genesis tank, that’s what you want,” they said. “Get a genisys tank and bathe in the rich flavours hitherto hidden from your palette.” Oh yes, just what a new vaper needs: hotspots. I’m not sure how long it took me to work out how to coil with mesh to avoid hot legs but I’m pretty sure I missed out on a couple of wedding anniversaries.

But then shouldn’t love be strong enough to overcome the lack of a bunch of flowers? Shouldn’t marriage be able to withstand the vagaries of a man obsessed with making little bits of wire coil in such a way that he smiles like he did at the birth of his children? Sure it is; love can overcome all. Love can make you forgive anything, even a lumbering oaf who cares more for pizza than he does for his in-laws. *This paragraph was definitely not inspired by the failure to book a table tonight at El Toro but should my wife read it she may wish to consider the words ‘love forgives all’.

Love can make you forgive the Kraken for the months of suffering because it looks lovely. It doesn’t get up to much these days and I’m thinking it probably never will – much like its owner, it sits here quietly contemplating life. But love isn’t at home for the Succubus (the dripper, not a pet name for my darling wife who would have loved a steak for tea). Love has packed its bag and slammed the door. I’m sitting writing this next to a mountain of used toilet roll. Dribbles and gushes from the low-slung holes have recreated Hurricane Barney’s devastation on my desktop. It’s not supposed to be like this, but then without the set-backs in life how sweet would the good things feel? Who needs steak anyway – there’s always Fallout.

 

 

“You don’t want another motorbike,” said the wife. “You don’t need another machine cluttering up the place.” The words were proffered with (probably) good reason. The mancave already groaned like an obese man as the sweet trolley approaches the table. There were functional machines, members of the motorcycle walking dead and lumpy metallic memories from rides long gone. I didn’t bother listening. I never listen.

It was a matter of necessity that the garage emptied out. Beating a hasty departure to South America meant that anything not fitting onto a bicycle was instantly classified as excess to requirements. Periodic clearing of the vape desk takes place for entirely different reasons as items fall out of favour. Of course that space is then useful as you can fill it with new stuff. I hang on to my ability to say goodbye to things with pride, it confirms to me that I’m not quite ready to be the person pushing a shopping trolley destined for the house full of rubbish.

The kids cop the same advice. Usually at ten minutes to dinner when they’re cramming down the entire range from Cadburys and Walkers. Of course, the words get bent and take on the hue of adamant instruction. Less ‘you might like to consider‘ and more ‘stop!’

Age is an awesome thing. Whereas most children respond to direction with blind compliance, aggregated birthdays imbue you with the strength to ignore instructions. Do I need to look at Ikea assembly cartoons? Do I flip. I vote, shave and procreate so I will do what I will with a Halford’s socket set. Only when necessity rears its head do I have to give the appearance of conforming. Until that moment I can give succour to my infantile and stubborn nature, relishing those things that deliver pleasure and give life a dab of colour.

And that’s why I blow some big clouds from my dripper. I do it because I enjoy it, it’s my go-to form of vaping, but I’m becoming aware that it isn’t how others would like me to vape. Having spent a couple of years talking to the local MP and sending off letters to my MEP about the planned changes to our ecig-world I reckon I’m pretty conversant in arguments for the freedom to make informed personal choices. But those who would like to see me stopped are other vapers.

I don’t sit in the front row of a cinema doing it – even if I lament the lack of atmospheric smoke sparkling in the projector’s glare. I’d even go so far as to say that if I did it’d be the least offensive thing happening there given the public’s love of mobile phones, explaining film plots to each other and endless crisp packet rustling. I get it, I get that some places aren’t conducive to cloud production. I’d no sooner vape in Asda than indulge in fellatio in Poundland. I get it. But on the other hand it’s hard to accept that sub-ohming makes those who do it the equivalent of a cross between Stanton Glantz, Pol Pot and Vanilla Ice.

In fact I’d contend that flashing images of vape gear online alongside knives and guns is probably worse. In even more fact, I’m almost pressed to say something like ‘you might like to consider‘ or ‘stop!’ when I see them. But then I’d also have to advise people to do what I do and ignore that request as well.